Page "Ava Gardner" Paragraph 20

Gardner became a friend of businessman and aviator Howard Hughes in the early to mid-1940s and the relationship lasted into the 1950s.

Gardner stated in her autobiography Ava: My Story, that she was never in love with Howard Hughes, but he was in and out of her life for about twenty years.

Hughes's trust in Gardner was what kept their relationship alive.

She describes him as " painfully shy, completely enigmatic and more eccentric ... than anyone had ever met.